You're Welcome Anytime You Have the Mind to Appear
by blueskiessunshine
Summary: Team Free Will goes to Disney World. Fluffy as all hell, and a teensy bit crack-y to boot.


"Come on, Sammy, how often do we find ourselves in Florida?"

Sam pulled a classic bitch face and looked to the ceiling, as though he thought the tiles could somehow help him out of this. "Hardly ever," he conceded.

"Exactly!" Dean said, knowing that he was grinning wider than he had in probably years, and knowing that it felt so good he hardly cared about how dumb he must look. "All right then." Clapping his hands once, he sat on the corner of his too-cheerful motel bed and closed his eyes. "Cas," he said, making sure his voice sounded nice and sober, "we've got a bit of a situation down here – real nasty stuff – and we could really use your help. What do you say?"

"What seems to be the problem?" Cas asked from the middle of the room. He was already distracted by the bright colors everywhere, and this was only the motel room. This was going to be fun.

Dean all but jumped up from the bed but made a valiant effort to look serious. "We have a case," he said, concentrating perhaps a little too hard on his face, judging by the inquisitive look Cas was giving him.

"Yes?"

"Uh," Sam said, piping up for no reason other than to help Dean out, for which Dean was grateful, "kids. It's a – well, we think it's a monster?" he finished, and if he wasn't altogether that convincing, at least he tried.

"Right," Dean said. "We think it's a monster, and it's," he paused to think, but Castiel's narrowed eyes threw him off and he blurted, "eating kids."

"You've found a monster," Cas repeated, as though unsure he was understanding properly, "that is eating children?"

"Yeah," Dean agreed, "and we need your help. You in?"

"Of course," Cas said, though he was still looking a bit confused.

"Great. Then you'll need these." Dean handed Cas a bundle of clothes – a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

Cas didn't say anything as the bundle was thrust into his hands, just looked down at the clothes as if he had no idea what their possible purpose could be. He stared for so long and so intently that eventually Dean said, "You'll need to blend in."

A few minutes later, Cas stepped out of the motel bathroom in the jeans and a blue t-shirt, and damn it if his eyes weren't even more striking than usual. Dean tried to ignore the little stutter in his chest and avoided meeting Cas's gaze as he handed the angel a pair of flip-flops.

Cas eyed them dubiously. "Where exactly are we going?" he asked.

"Uh," Dean stalled, "to the scene of the crime, naturally."

This non-answer was evidently satisfactory; Cas slipped the flip-flops onto his feet and nodded once, following Sam and Dean out into the Florida sun.

"I don't understand," Cas said. He was squinting up at the sign overhead, listing all of the various ticket packages available. "There is a monster eating children, at Disney World?"

"Absolutely," Dean said. Sam was at the window, ordering three tickets to Magic Kingdom for the day. "What better place, right?" Dean asked.

"I suppose there are many children here," Cas agreed, still squinting around at the ticket booths and pathways.

"Before we do anything else," Dean said when Sam had paid for their tickets and the three of them were walking away from the window, "we need to get Cas here some shades."

Naturally, there was a gift shop mere feet away, but despite his best efforts, Dean couldn't convince Cas to buy a pair of sunglasses with Goofy ears hanging off of them. In the end, they left the shop with a pair of cheap aviators and an autograph book. When Dean had picked it up, Sam had given him his best "Are you serious?" face, but Dean had only grinned and said, "Dude – princesses." Nothing was going to ruin this day for him.

Watching Cas on the monorail to Magic Kingdom might have been the funniest thing Dean had ever done. "You know for someone who flies everywhere," he managed to say between chuckling, "you don't take well to new forms of transportation."

Cas's eyes were wide and fixed on Dean's face as though he couldn't bring himself to look out the windows at the speeding scenery. He looked as terrified as he had that day in the "den of iniquity," though this was about the exact opposite scenario.

"Calm down, Cas, we're perfectly safe," Dean said, while Sam just looked out the windows. He knew what Dean was up to and he was only going along with it because Dean was his brother – he did not approve, and Dean knew it, so he wasn't pushing his luck on the Sam front.

"That's easy for you to say," Cas grumbled. "You're sitting down." Cas was stuck standing, clinging to the metal pole and trying not to fall into the little girl standing next to him every time the monorail rounded a corner.

When the conductor came on the intercom to announce that they were stuck for a moment to wait for traffic to clear, Cas looked as though he nearly had a heart attack, which just sent Dean laughing harder. In the end, the monorail arrived at its destination all too soon, for Dean's taste, and not nearly soon enough for Castiel's. But arriving had its perks too – not least of which being that Dean could scoop Cas's hand into his own with a quick, "Wouldn't want to lose you," for explanation.

It was a fair concern. At the start of the day, the entrance to the Magic Kingdom was swarming with people – mothers and fathers already stressed, excited children tugging on any parts of their parents within reach, sun-burnt babies already crying. It was a lot for an angel of the Lord to handle, and Dean didn't want Cas getting swept up in the jumble.

Sam rolled his eyes, muttered, "Come on," and proceeded to use his bulk to carve a path down the ramp to the turnstiles. Dean could have watched Cas stare at the ticket turnstiles for an hour, easily – he was fascinated by the whole process, the machine sucking in the tickets like a breath and spitting them out on the other side, the gentle press of a million fingers to the electric print reader. The look on his face as he watched it was – well, it was nothing short of endearing, if Dean was honest with himself. Fortunately, they were hurried through by a harried-looking Cast Member and Dean didn't have to think too long and hard on that one.

Sam, ever practical, grabbed a map and something called a "Times Guide" as they passed beneath the bridge-arch-thing (Dean didn't really know what it was, but he was pretty sure there was a train on top of it) and then they were there – a magical world where nothing bad ever happened. Except the child-eating monster, of course.

Dean couldn't fight back his own smile, and truthfully he wasn't sure he wanted to. The sun was bright and there was literally laughter in the air. Everything – from the gleaming castle at the end of the street to the pavement beneath their feet – seemed to shine, and if Cas happened to be the most radiant thing there, well then, it was probably just the sun.

"Look," Sam was saying, "according to the map, there's a Guest Relations desk right over there. I'm going to go check it out – you guys stay here."

Dean rolled his eyes, but said, "Whatever you say, Sammy," anyway. Until he noticed that they were standing right in front of a building which professed to house princesses. "Cas," he said, "let's go."

"Shouldn't we – " Cas began, looking back over his shoulder in the direction Sam had gone.

But Dean just looked at him until he stopped talking. "Princesses, Cas," he said. "Princesses." And with no further argument, Dean strolled up the steps and into the building, Cas following along behind him.

"Why are we in line to meet princesses if we're supposed to be finding a monster?" Cas asked.

"Well, we have to ask around, don't we?"

"I suppose."

"Then why not ask princesses?"

Dean and Cas made it all the way through the line with this pretext, but Dean could tell that it was slipping by the time they got to the princesses themselves and they kept saying things like, "Hello! What are you celebrating today?"

Every time Cas tried to ask one of them about monsters, Belle would say, "It sounds like someone's spent a little too much time in their books!" or Snow White would make a crack about not going out in the woods alone if there were monsters about. It was all Dean could do not to induce a heart attack from forcing himself not to laugh, let alone try to steer the conversation in a way that would keep up the façade.

In the end, a very confused Castiel was wandering through the exit gift shop trying to decide if the princesses were in cahoots with the monster or if they'd been trying to offer clues because they were not able to speak freely. Dean was so red in the face from trying to keep himself together that even Cas couldn't remain oblivious any longer. He stopped just outside the shop on a little terrace and leveled Dean was a glare all too serious for Walt Disney World.

"Dean," he said, his voice stern. "There is no monster, is there?"

Dean let out a long breath. "No," he admitted.

Cas's lower jaw jutted out and he pointedly looked away from Dean when he said, "Don't you think there are more important things that I – that all of us – should be doing?"

"Aw, come on, Cas! When's the last time any of us have had a day off, huh?" Dean dipped his head, forcing Cas to meet his eyes. "Huh?" he prompted. But still Cas said nothing. "Will it make you feel better if I buy you a lollipop?"

Dean made a pact with himself to never hold it against Cas that the promise of a lollipop actually worked.

"Dean, I told you to stay here!" Sam called a moment later when Dean and Cas came down off the terrace and arrived back on the street where they'd started.

"Princesses, Sammy," Dean said with a flash of a grin, and then, "Now, come on, I owe Cas a lollipop in place of a kid-eating monster."

"You knew there was no monster?" Cas asked quietly behind Dean's back as he led the way down the street.

"Sorry, man," Sam said, probably with a shrug of his massive shoulders. "Dean really wanted to go to Disney World."

"I suppose," Cas said, "I can understand his desire to spend a day here. But was it really necessary to bring me here as well?"

Dean leaned back, just the tiniest bit, but for a moment there was only silence. Then, with just the touch of laughter in his voice, Sam said, "Yeah – yeah, I think it might've been."

Dean couldn't even feel foolish stepping over the threshold into something called the "Main Street Confectionary" – there was just something about this place that had him feeling lighter than he had in years. And while he didn't know what a "confectionary" was, he was fairly certain he could get Cas a lollipop in one.

Sure enough, there was a whole rack full of them – not to mention about a million other things that could give a guy a cavity for looking hard enough (and Dean made a mental note to buy Cas some cotton candy later – purely for the angel's benefit, of course). "Pick your poison, Cas," Dean said. "You want grape flavor with Mickey Mouse on it, or this pink one?"

"What is a Mickey Mouse?"

"Whoa, whoa, man, keep it down," Dean said. "We paid a lot for these tickets, I don't want to get kicked out. You mean to tell me you watched this planet for thousands of years and you've never heard of Mickey Mouse?"

Cas met Dean's eyes but said nothing, as though waiting for an explanation.

Dean grabbed the grape lollipop and brought it to the nearest cash register. While he paid, he tried to explain in a way that Cas would understand. "Mickey's sort of like – sort of like the God of Disney World," he said.

"No wonder I've never heard of him," Cas said, not without a note of petulance. "This mouse sounds like a blasphemer to me."

Under normal circumstances, Dean might have argued the point. But today was not a normal day, and the magical world of Disney was calling.

For the rest of the morning, they hit all the staples. They got popcorn, met some new princess that they'd been out of the loop for too long to recognize ("Who cares if we don't know who she is? _Princesses_, Sammy!"), and spent a good ten minutes staring up at the castle. It took a lot of pushing and prodding on both brothers' parts to get Cas onto Space Mountain, but as soon as they were off of it, he insisted that they go again immediately.

Dean totally kept his cool when they met Buzz Lightyear, and Cas even stopped trying to understand every pop culture reference and just let himself enjoy the atmosphere. In the afternoon they took what Dean felt was a well-deserved nap on the People Mover, and while Sam went off to find "real food" (which Dean assumed meant "salad"), Dean and Cas found a quiet corner where they could sit and eat their Dole Whips out of the sun.

"This," Cas said after his first bite, "is amazing. What is this?"

"It's pineapple, Cas." Dean watched Cas suck another spoonful of ice cream off his plastic silverware before shaking his head and reminding himself that his own ice cream was melting.

They sat in companionable silence for a couple minutes, each eating his own ice cream and definitely not watching the other, but when Cas put his Dole Whip down on the bench beside him, Dean had to ask. "What's up, man?"

"Dean," Cas said, his eyes fixed on a tree several feet away, "why did you bring me here today?"

Dean took another bite of his ice cream to stall for time. "Sam and I," he said, "we never got to do the Disney World thing. Shocker, I know – John Winchester not bringing his kids to Disney. It's kind of a thing that everyone does, if they can."

"You wanted you and your brother to have that experience," Cas said, in that voice he used when he was figuring things out, putting pieces together in his mind after Dean nudged them a little in the right direction.

"Yeah," Dean said, "but it's more than that too. Disney World is – well, it's supposed to be," he took a deep breath, and hoped he'd see a way out of this after the fact, "it's supposed to be the place where dreams come true."

"Magic?" Cas said, and Dean couldn't help but laugh a little.

"Maybe," he agreed. "A certain kind of magic."

"What do you dream, Dean?" Cas asked. His ice cream was definitely melting now, and when had Dean met his eyes again, when he'd been so carefully avoiding them?

And then the sun was completely blocked and Dean looked up to see that Sam had returned. "The only salad I could find was drowned in dressing," he grumbled, but quickly changed the subject. "We haven't even been on Pirates of the Caribbean yet, guys, come on."

Dean laughed – because Sam had only gone along with this idea grudgingly in the first place – but he and Cas quickly finished their ice creams and headed off in the direction of pirates. Dean could have sworn that Cas actually jumped a couple of times during the ride, but every time he did, he ended up just that much closer to Dean, who couldn't bring himself to complain.

After that, Sam dragged them into the Hall of Presidents, which was probably the most boring twenty minutes of Dean's life, but it was well worth it to see Cas rubbing at his eyes as they left. "What?" he snapped when he noticed Dean watching him wipe away what were surely a couple of tears. "I've simply never found the history of United States presidents to be so emotionally moving in the past."

"Right," Dean laughed, and even Sam grinned at that one.

The afternoon was filled with any rides that they could get Cas on (though they all agreed to skip Haunted Mansion), the cotton candy Dean had promised himself, and a very wet angel of the Lord grousing about singing rabbits and some very rude vultures. By the end of the day, Cas was so exhausted (because yes, he was frequently busy and he always worked hard, but he had never walked so much in one day before) that he kept bumping his shoulders into Dean's as they walked.

"Hang in there, buddy," Dean told him. "We just have fireworks left, and then we can go home."

"Fireworks?" Cas asked.

"You can't go to Disney World without seeing fireworks."

Cas frowned and nodded. "Of course," he said, as though he really thought he could get away with pretending he'd already known this information. Dean grinned, hoping the affection on his face was at least shielded from Sam (and knowing it was unlikely).

He found the three of them a spot right in the middle of the circle in front of the castle, just a few minutes before the fireworks were supposed to start. He made sure they weren't standing in front of any little kids, but Sam sat down anyway, probably figuring – and rightly so – that he would block anyone's view, whether they were kids or not.

The press of the crowd gave the illusion of privacy, even though it was the exact opposite. Just before the fireworks began, Dean positioned Cas in front of him, so he could be sure the shorter man had a good view. And if Dean stood a little closer to Cas than was strictly made necessary by the throng surrounding them, well, Cas didn't seem to notice or mind. And if, just as the fireworks began overhead, Dean leaned in and pressed the softest kiss, like a wish, to the tuft of hair behind Cas's ear, well – only Cas had to know.


End file.
